| RPG |
| Screenshot | Title | Platform | Description | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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ASCII Sector | Windows Linux macOS |
A de-make of the classic Elite / Frontier series. Start with a dinky scoutship, merchant your way around or take bounties to acquire cash and disregard graphics. There are quests you could follow, or not, and player-created quests you can plug into existing save games without needing to start over. | Link |
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Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden | Windows | Or, more precisely: Tales of Game's Presents Chef Boyardee's Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa. This may be one of the the greatest (freeware) RPG ever made. You play as Charles Barkley, a once-great B-Baller who lives in the dystopian city of Neo New York, who goes on an epic quest to stop a second Ballocaust from the evil organization B.L.O.O.D.M.O.S.E.S., aided by the octoroon great-grandson of Lebron James, Balthios, a space-traveling dwarf with a skin made of basketballs named Cyberdwarf, and his son Hoopz, and bring back the slams and the jams once more. The battle system is turn-based with action commands. The story is both dramatic and hilarious at the same time, and the dialogue and all the off-beat references will leave you wanting for more. The only flaw is that it ends. | Link |
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Cardinal Quest 2 | Flash | A classic Roguelike game, 3 difficulty settings. After each playthrough win or lose, you gain Morale points which can buy abilities and classes to change up the gameplay | Link |
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Decker | Windows | Loosely based on the Shadowrun Universe, you play a hacker (Decker) trying to make ends meet. | Link |
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Desktop Dungeons (Alpha) | Windows html5 |
A twist on roguelike genre: the entire map is just one screen, monsters don't move and Fog Of War is the most valuable resource. Amazingly deep for a game where one session rarely plays for longer than 15 minutes, has a nice balance between classes (there are eighteen and each one of them offers quite a differing experience) and offers a wide variety of challenges with special dungeons, Ranked mode, Gauntlet and a story mode.Currently in Beta. Not free, but has new art, a dungeon prep system, quests, and huge balance overhauls. | Link |
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The Desolate Room | Windows | An isolated walking coffee machine that collects eggs explores the memories of his broken robot friends by logging on to an 8-bit virtual world with corrupted pieces of code that the robots' memories powered by the eggs fight against. Has a great, involving battle system, 2D/3D graphics (akin to Donkey Kong Country) and a disorienting plot. No options for controls or resolution. (unstable at points) | Link |
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Dhux's Scar | Windows | Link | |
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Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup | Windows | Rogue like game that’s been around for some time still getting updates also a web version exist. | Link |
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Dungeons of Fayte | Windows | You spend some of your time in the dungeon, killing monsters and getting gold, and the rest of your time in town training and building stats. You can play with up to 4 players on a single computer. | Link |
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Dwarf Fortress | Windows Linux |
You start with a few dwarves and try to build a fortress while avoiding savage animals, fighting goblin assaults, trading with elves, etc... The game is really a simulation, with lots and lots of parameters. For example, EVERY single living thing has a separate health counter for EVERY body part. Very hard to learn, check a tutorial on the Internet and use the wiki, as the game is nearly impenetrable otherwise. Original game has ASCII graphics, but mods can replace them with sprites. Also, the current version is somewhat faster and uses a better graphic renderer, so you should probably use that instead. | Link |
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Elona | Windows | Have you ever wanted to unleash a pandemic that makes you squirt Aliens out of your dick? Nuke a god damn town? How about killing elder gods with only a pair of fucking panties in your hand? Elona is unique among other roguelikes in the way it has a huge open world to explore, decent sprite-based graphics and is clowntits fucking insane in every conceivable way.
It’s a shame it’s not being updated anymore, but a brave soul is working on creating a Java port of the game. |
Link |
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Exile (series) | Windows classic Mac |
You were banished by the emperor into a subterranean world, where there's a whole civilization of exiles. The whole series was later remade as Avernum with massively improved graphics, so the original ones were made free. | Link |
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Final Fantasy VII FC | Windows | Made from the same guys who made Rockman 7&8 Famicom, it's FF7 8-Bit! Basically FF7, but like the classic ones. | Link |
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Guardian of Paradise | Windows | A little known game that draws inspiration from Zelda and Beyond Oasis. You get different elemental spirits, each of which has multiple abilities. Change your active spirit by collecting different elemental coins. This is a simple system that is used very cleverly as you never gain more MP than you start with, and as a result several puzzles use this to make you think of the best solution. Gorgeous levels and design, and has pretty fun boss fights and music. | Game Translation |
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Shadow of Power | Windows | You're a hearty little guy named holdger and shit just hit the fan. Time to explore a vast world with tons of unique items to collect and Lots of wacky NPCs to meet as you make your way to the castle of the big baddie. Overall, the game is a slightly humorous, darker parody of Zelda. System requirements for this game is so low you can run it on your spider infested/webbed windows 98 dell. The art itself is quite charming though. | Link |
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Hikkikomori Quest | Windows | Life as an average Pink board-goer (Probably /a/) | Link |
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Iter Vehemens ad Necem (IVAN) | Windows | Link | |
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Legerdemain | Windows | A roguelike that's more like an RPG due to its story, and the ability to save. | Link |
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Legionwood: Tale of the Two Swords | Windows | Link | |
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Linley's Dungeon Crawl | Windows | Link | |
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Merry Gear Solid: Secret Santa | Windows | A very good parody of the Metal Gear Solid series while also mixing the traditional NES Metal Gear and MGS gameplay. Most of the jokes are only understandable to MGS fans so please, play the original before playing this. | Link |
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Merry Gear Solid 2: Ghosts of Christmas Past | Windows | A sequel to the first except it vastly improved the gameplay and the length of the game (although most of it is due to backtracking for obtain certain items). Still enjoyable. (about 10x bigger) | Link |
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Middens | Windows | Surreal RPG game. | Link |
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Nethack | Windows Linux macOS |
Imagine Dungeons and Dragons in a very difficult, video game form. Death is permanent, the dungeon is always randomly generated, and you aren't going to win for a very long time. |
Link |
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Off | Windows | A fantastic French RPG game, similar to Yume Nikki in some aspects. Very revered in the French RPG Maker community, and finally got translated in 2011. Godly atmosphere, mostly created by the ethereal visuals and a fantastic soundtrack. | Link |
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Palette | Windows | Link | |
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Realm of the Mad God | Flash online Steam |
A Flash-embedded pseudo 8-bit MMORPG that's plays like a cross between Gauntlet and a roguelike. Based around working with others, making it somewhat difficult to conquer foes alone. Features different classes and dungeons to explore, and a huge ass world map with tons of bosses and monster swarms. Constantly updated to make things better and easier and/or harder. | Game Wiki |
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Rogue | Windows Java |
The one, the only, the original: Rogue is the 1980 game that would inspire countless imitators known as "Roguelikes". A hard-as-nails dungeon-crawler using ASCII graphics, permanent death, and complex keyboard commands, Rogue is as hardcore as it gets. Originally popular on college Unix systems in the 1980s, Rogue is one of the most influential - and one of the most difficult - games ever made. If you somehow manage to beat it (spoiler: you won't), consider yourself a god among men. | Link Lost but can't be hard to find |
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Rogue Survivor | Windows | As the name suggest, Rogue Survivor is a roguelike game where you have to survive in a huge town after a zombie apocalypse. Completed with simple graphic and some musics that makes the atmosphere, it's actually pretty good and can be really enjoyable. If the idea of a realistic rpg turn-based zombie apocalypse game sounds interesting to you, check it out. | Link |
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Star Flight: The Lost Colony | Windows | Based on Starflight and Starflight II: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula. | Link |
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Shoot First | Windows | Link | |
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Skipmore.com | Flash | Fairune- A short action adventure styled after Ys. Has items and hidden passages to find. Tower Climber- An action game that revolves around timed jumps to get jewels to save a princess. Mamono Slayer- Another short Act-Adv, based off Dragon Slayer, has weird "logic" puzzles. Synopsis Quest- A collection of 25 gag games. Use your RPG know-how to find the real ending!Skipmore- Moonland home of these and other fun mini-games, RPG and otherwise | |
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Sonny | Flash | In many video games you kill zombies, in this one, you are the zombie. Reanimated aboard the ship; the White November, you set out to find out what happened to you. There are several classes you can choose from at the start depending on how you play RPG battles. A third game was in the works but became a lesser interesting remake of the first one. | Sonny 1 Sonny 2 |
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Tales of Maj Eyal | Windows Linux macOS |
Game is free on Its own website or you can pay for it and DLC on Steam etc.
A hidden gem of a game. For people who like strategy, dungeon crawling, a good immersive background world but don't like playing as punctuation marks (the default skin drawn by a good artist is for non-oldschoolers like us) . For an indie game it has a shitload of content, good music, and well written story bits written by contributors over the years. You start off by picking a race and class and fighting through dungeons, collecting equipment and doing optional quests to make yourself stronger so that the mid-late game bosses don't rape you too hard. If you don't die, eventually you get to unravel a dastardly plot where some evil dudes try to destroy the world with a weapon from an ancient civilization. Awesome game that suffers from non-existent publicity. screenshots |
Link |
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Tales of the Drunken Paladin | Windows | A 'Comedic' RPG | Link |
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The Elder Scrolls: Arena | DOS | The first Elder Scrolls game, a huge, open ended RPG with a classic D&D ruleset and feel in first-person. As long as you have the patience and are okay with older looking games, then it's so worth it. Especially at a measly 9 MB. You will need DOSBox to play this, however, an installer package called "ArenaSetup" gives you everything you need to play The Elder Scrolls: Arena along with a French translation and AZERTY keyboard support. | Link ArenaSetup |
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The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall | DOS | The second Elder Scrolls game. Like the first, enjoy a huge open ended world in a classic, first-person RPG. Tons of fun. The game's graphics and sound are much better than the first. You will need DOSBox to play this, however an installer package called "DaggerfallSetup" gives you everything you need to play the game out of the box along with extra quests, bugfixes, and translations. | Link DaggerfallSetup Daggerfall Unity |
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Theia – The Crimson Eclipse | Windows | Theia is an award-winning role-playing videogame, the quintessence of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi J-RPG. It capitalizes on all the elements that made the genre memorable during the 16/32 bit era: a compelling story, plot twists, mini-games, a lot of playable and unlockable characters, collectibles, item crafting, mini-games, different endings, and so on.
It takes about 30 hours to finish the main quest, with up to 10 or more to complete the optional hunts, achievements, and side-quests. Graphics are beautiful, with colorful locations and dreamy lighting effects. Extremely well-done battle animations and hand-drawn cut-scenes further enrich the gaming experience. Entirely made by a single person (Lollo Rocket Diver - OnDead Games). It makes use of non-original assets and music borrowed from other games. Free to download and play. |
Link |
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Touhou Mother | Windows | Homages several games, but concentrates on the Touhou and Earthbound crossover. References aside, it's a fun, solid story (a bit back-knowledge helps though). Although made in RPGMaker 2000, the designer, "S", replicated Earthbound's battles and effects quite well. For the masochist in you, there's even multiple difficulty levels to take on! Unsurprisingly, it garnered enough love for S to make a sequel. It's still in the works, but it looks even better than ever, even using the music combos from Mother 3. | Preview, English version |
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Transcendence | Windows | Take a spaceship, blast aliens, loot and whiz through an isometric universe to the galactic core with intermediate stops at space stations. First line says all. Incredibly fun and a lot of replayibility due to a randomly generated universe. Guy has been developing it at a snails pace since 1995. Also easily moddable. | Game, mods |
| Turovero: The Celestial Tower | Windows | A freeware dark fantasy Role-Playing Game: Four brave adventurers have taken it upon themselves to make the perilous climb to oust the Dark One and return hope to the world.
This game might look at first as a traditional dungeon crawler, filled with random encounters and a stereotypical story but later reveals several key plot twists. Each of the protagonists is haunted by some past trauma; climbing the Tower will result in an actual voyage within themselves to unmask a hidden truth. A game that could have easily been commercial due to the excellent work done in the hand-drawn scenes and composing the original, moving, musical score. Highly recommended to any RPG fan. |
Check the game out! | |
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Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar | Windows macOS |
AVATAR! Lord British has called you to Britannia to uphold his virtues and lead his people to the path of enlightenment. Travel through the land of Britannia, visit all villages, learn all about the virtues and retrieve the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom.
Still very good, even if it looks dated. A fan patch is available that gives the graphics quite the overhaul. |
Link Fan patches |
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Zelda Classic | Windows Linux macOS |
Fan remake of the original NES classic The Legend of Zelda. But most importantly, it includes an editor that lets you create new quests - and there are already hundreds for download. | Link |
